“Television book clubs have scaled back from their headiest days a couple of years ago, but even brief on-air segments now have flourishing afterlives online. The “Oprah” site is by far the richest, but “Today” and “Good Morning America” also have online extensions of their book clubs, where readers can find substantial excerpts from books along with interviews and online chats with authors. These sites create an endless loop between television and the Web.”
Tag: 03.12.04
Kimmelman: This Whitney Biennale Is A Winner
That this year’s Whitney Biennale is “the best in years,” writes Michael Kimmelman, won’t stop the usual carping and complaining. The Biennale’s three curators “overcame the inevitable strains and nicely capitalized on their differences in taste, coming up with the most cogent and layered biennial in years.”
Hazlewood: If Bach Was A Beatle, Vivaldi Was A Rolling Stone
Former punk-rocker Charles Hazlewood is the BBC’s new “face of classical music,” and he takes a particularly populist approach to his shows: “There is a terrible conservatism, like a cancer, right in the heartlands of music-making, a tremendous resistance to change, an absolute horror of the idea that more people might connect with music. That infuriates me more than I can say. The very idea that people are too stupid to get their heads round what a fugue is is beyond me. I think it’s total bollocks and it drives me mad.”
Are The Music Charts Obsolete?
Music producers are fascinated with the demographic shift in music sales. Instead of kids driving the charts, it’s older fans with money to buy CDs. But “the problem is that the whole concept of the charts may have become outdated, certainly as a measurement of units of music consumed. A large and ever growing proportion of young people simply no longer go into record shops, or even listen to the radio, but that does not mean they are not interested in music.”
Chicago’s Vastly Ambitious Millennium Park
By the time of its opening in the summer, the park will have cost in excess of $400 million; more than twice the figure originally envisaged.
From Mali To America (And Back)
American musicians are studying the music of Mali (think Timbuktu) and its direct connections to American blues. “It is quite obvious that several African musical traditions have had a major impact on Western music styles. Jazz, blues, rock and roll, salsa, funk, and hip-hop would not have existed without Africa’s influence and genetic pollination. What’s intriguing about the Mali connection is that it is so direct and palpable.”